


These Mortal Lullabies

by littledust



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: M/M, Orpheus and Eurydice Myth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 00:54:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledust/pseuds/littledust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A grief-stricken Todd is offered the opportunity to descend into the underworld and bring Neil back to the land of the living.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Mortal Lullabies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inabathrobe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inabathrobe/gifts).



> Enjoy a treat on this Yuletide, dear recipient! I couldn't resist writing my own interpretation of your wonderful prompt. The title is courtesy of "In Memoriam A.H.H." by Lord Alfred Tennyson.

More snow falls overnight. Todd wonders if dying feels like a blizzard, soft and almost beautiful until it covers you in cold. No one will tell any of them how Neil died. Did he leap to his death? Did he swallow pills? Did he, as Charlie suggested, pull the trigger on his father's gun? For all Todd's fearful nature, he's never imagined many ways for a boy to die that weren't accidental: car crash, drowning, lightning strike. Violent deaths all, suggesting nothing of Neil's wit, his smile, his _life_. Todd stares out into the still white landscape, smothered under a great gray sky.

Charlie comes in without knocking, face drawn in a way that means he has more bad news to bear. "The funeral will be closed casket. We're not invited." He bites off his last sentence with a savage snap of teeth, more Nuwanda than Charlie.

"Good. I don't think I could be in the same room as the man who killed Neil," Todd says, calmer than he feels. If he had a gun, he would shoot Mr. Perry. If he had a car, he would drive it through the center of Neil's house, then turn around what was left of the car and drive it through Welton, smashing every structure that tried to shut Neil away. If he asked, would Meeks and Pitt help him build a bomb?

Then Charlie sits on what was once Neil's bed, now just a mattress with all of the linens stripped away. There's nothing of Nuwanda in his face now. "He killed himself. It's easy to pretend it was his father, but Christ, Todd--you saw the way Neil looks--looked around him. Like he couldn't run."

"But he did. And now no one can touch him."

Something inside Todd is wakeful enough to quiver as he lets those last words escape. If they reveal too much to Charlie, he says nothing, doesn't even raise an eyebrow. Even a grieving Charlie might not pass up the opportunity to compare Todd to a teenage widow, large-eyed and dramatic in her grief. It's an ugly thought. Most of Todd is weary beyond belief; from a great distance, he watches his fear and his ugliness curl around one another like demonic bedfellows. Charlie is his friend. He should think better of him than that.

Neil was his friend, too.

"I'd like to be alone, please," Todd hears himself saying.

Charlie rises without protest, his tread heavy on the small length of floor from bed to the doorway. "I'll tell the others," he promises over his shoulder. "You aren't the only one who misses him." His tone is mild; the words might be a warning, a rebuke, an expression of sympathy.

"Yeah," Todd says, and lies down as the door clicks shut.

He might be the only one who loved Neil, though; certainly the only one Neil kissed on the night before the play, quick but already sure of Todd's response. Or perhaps that was the actor in him after all, declaring to the world that his footing was sure when he was as much a victim of gravity as anyone else.

Todd's fingers ghost over his own lips. Mr. Keating would have some quotation for this, pluck some lesson out of the fact of mortality. Did he know that one of them would be food for worms so soon?

The Dead Poets' anthology of poetry lies under his pillow. Todd tugs it out, leafing through the pages until he settles on one at random. " _So we'll no more go a-roving so late into the night,_ " he reads, and chokes on a laugh. The ceiling is blank white above him, suffocating as snow. "No, I suppose not." Neil took that with him when he died. No, no, the thing that took _Neil_ took the Dead Poets Society with it as well.

Despite the early hour, Todd closes his eyes. He might dream of Neil if he sleeps. Like the characters of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ , he might wake to find everything right with the world, all the lovers reunited and Puck promising to make amends. Everyone would forgive Neil for casting shadows, so long as he chased them away come morning.

*

They let Todd sleep through lunch, then dinner. It's well into night before Todd wakes, empty but unwilling to eat. Everything tastes bland to him since he vomited his last real meal into the snow; now whatever he puts on his tongue is more the idea of food than the thing itself.

With slow, stumbling fingers, Todd dresses. After a moment, he tucks the book of poetry into the front of his uniform jacket, then pulls on his winter coat. A scarf follows, then a hat. A few minutes of searching reveals his boots under the bed. He doesn't have the energy or the right to reconvene the Dead Poets Society, but if he can't go to Neil's funeral, he can conduct his own vigil. When he passes his friends' doors, Todd promises that tomorrow night he'll wake them. Tomorrow night, they'll share their grief.

As he slips through the halls and across school grounds, Todd presses a bare hand (gloves, he forgot his gloves) over the book. It rests over his heart, though he doubts it's thick enough to stop a bullet.

The woods tonight aren't lovely, but they are dark and deep. The pale glow of the moon against the whiteness of the snow is the only real light save for Todd's flashlight. He turns the beam too often on clumps of bushes, afraid of--what? Beasts that might drag a grief-stricken boy away from his own misery? He laughs once, breath steaming in the cold air.

The mouth of the cave looms dark, and Todd shivers as he squeezes himself inside, avoiding the twisted scrape of the walls. Their club might not have lasted through the end of fall semester; Todd remembers his brother complaining about the winters in New England. In the process of finding his usual seat, Todd trips over something and sends it clattering. A shine of his flashlight reveals the object as the beat-up old lamp Neil proclaimed the god of the cave.

"God of nonsense," Todd muttered, but he sets it back upright and retrieves the candle. Next to the lamp is a filthy book of matches that, against all odds, contains a match that lights when he strikes it. Todd lights the candle and watches the orange flame creep along the wick. He hisses in pain when the forgotten match burns his fingers, and drops the match to jam them in his mouth. The candle does little to illuminate the cave, but it throws strange shapes against the stone, stranger still where the flashlight beam doesn't reach.

Well, it's almost Christmas and he's in a cave in the woods in the middle of the night. What else was he expecting?

This time, Todd looks over the table of contents before he flips to a poem that looks interesting. " _In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure dome decree,_ " he reads, and the words tumble off his tongue like acrobats. He falls into a rhythm, voice growing stronger as he reads of a strange river and stranger caverns, a mirage painted by poetry. " _For he on honeydew hath fed, / And drunk the milk of Paradise,_ " Todd concludes, and lifts his eyes from the pages. For a moment, he can see Coleridge's vision just beyond the shadows, and then he is left alone. Alone in a cave, reading poetry to himself while his fingers grow numb.

Todd shuts the book. He tries not the think of what Mr. Keating would say, but he can feel a sympathetic hand on his shoulder, can hear him saying, very kindly, _He's not coming back, Todd. Nothing will change that, not words or tears or anger._

Words he'll leave to others, but tears and anger he has in plenty. Todd allows his tears to fall unchecked as he stares into the wavering light at the top of the cave god. "I would do anything," he says. Outside, wind stirs the trees. "Anything to bring him back."

The flashlight goes dead in his hand.

"Quite a promise to make on the winter solstice," says a voice from the shadows.

Todd gives a wordless shout, clutches the poetry book to his chest as though it could do him any good, and bangs his head on the cave wall. "This isn't funny, Charlie!" he says, though the voice sounded nothing like Charlie at all. It sounded like dropping a pebble into a well, listening for the splash and hearing endless clatters instead.

The candle flares, and the voice says, "I am not he. You may call me the god of the cave, though your friend did not provide a very good likeness."

Out of the shadows steps--a fairy. That's the first term that springs to Todd's mind: the figure is humanoid, silver-haired despite unwrinkled skin, and stands no higher than Todd's knee. Its only clothing is a loincloth constructed from tattered brown leaves, though it wears many necklaces made with pitted stones. It looks absurd standing next to the lamp.

Todd blinks and the fairy is sitting next to him, grown just his height. "Or would you like to call me Puck? Or Robin Goodfellow? You mortals are so concerned with names, but you couldn't pronounce my true one." It--his--voice is neither old nor young, now just barely accented with the wild strangeness Todd heard moments before.

"Robin," Todd says, because _Puck_ is too painful. "I'm Todd. Why are you here?"

"Why are _you_ here?" Robin echoes, and smiles. His canines are sharp.

"Neil killed himself," Todd says. Speaking the words aloud makes his eyes fill with tears once more; if Robin notices, he gives no indication. "I meant it when I said I would do anything to get him back. Do you want my life instead?"

"What would I do with a mortal life?" Robin demands, outraged. "Spend all my time trapped in between books and schoolboys, using cold steel to feed myself? It's been a long time since there was music and dance in this place, and it's all thanks to your dead friend. Which is why my world is prepared to make you an offer."

Fear fans out dozens of half-forgotten fairytale pages across Todd's mind. Robin smiles like a boy who would steal your lunch money, who would start half a dozen cruel rumors behind your back, who would charm you still with a quick wit and ready grin. No bargain with a fairy ever goes well, or a god, or whatever this creature is.

"Let's hear it," Todd says. He licks his lips. "No promises."

Robin's smile curls wider, like smoke. "No, of course not. Mortals are known for resisting temptation when it strikes. The bargain is thus, Todd Anderson: if you can find your way into the underworld, if you can find your way to the queen some call Persephone, if you can convince her to let your friend go, if you can lead him back to your world--if all of these come to pass, your friend's life will be restored."

Memory stirs, some lesson from an English class before Mr. Keating. "What, like Orpheus?"

"Very like, though were I you, I would hope for a different ending."

Todd shakes his head. He's talking to a fairy by candlelight, sitting in a cave because his grief for Neil is too large a thing for the walls of Welton. He's gone mad. "I don't understand why you're letting me do this. I've been raised Christian--" though Todd always felt too insignificant to have much of a relationship with God, and now Neil-- "and I'm not--I don't--why me?"

In the time it takes Todd to spit out the question, Robin has shifted again, now child-sized and squatting thoughtfully on a different rock. "You're a poet," he says, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Poets have special dispensation. You've been educated in the classics. Consider Dante, whose companion was Virgil."

"This is a very mixed mythology," Todd says, because it's that or curl into a ball.

"Neil's parents would walk through the underworld, but they haven't the tongue for it, so they haven't the feet." Robin pauses to cackle at his own small joke. "Your other friends have the tongue, but they haven't the heart, or rather, they have too much of it. You're the only one with nothing to lose."

The truth in the creature's words cuts as cruelly as one of Charlie's mocking phrases. Todd flinches, but forces himself to look Robin in his strange silver eyes.

"Then I better go," Todd says.

Robin claps his hands. The sound is far louder than it ought to be, like a crack of thunder enclosed between stone walls. "The bargain is made!" he shouts, the wildness restored to his voice, rushing like a river through rock. "Give us a poem to open the gate."

Panic seizes hold of Todd's throat like a living thing. He's never written a poem of his own save for the one he refused to read aloud. He's just signed his soul over to a task that requires speaking. His gaze falls on the book of verse, still clutched to his chest. He opens it and runs a trembling hand down the table of contents. There. This will have to do.

" _Death be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,_ " Todd forces out, his voice creaky. " _For those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow, / Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me._ " Robin tilts his head, listening as Todd's voice regains its strength toward the end of the poem: " _And Death shall be no more, death thou shalt die!_ "

Robin leaps up, in his laughter the sound of the avalanche. "Well chosen! Follow, then, into hell's heart!"

Todd rises to his feet. Robin has capered beyond the reach of the candlelight, but silver light flickers from his hair, lighting a way in the darkness and shadow.

Shutting the book, Todd follows.

*

At first, the underworld is nothing more than darkness. The only light is Robin's hair, the only noise the faint scrape of his many necklaces. Their footfalls make no sound, and when Todd reaches out a hand to steady himself against the cave walls, his hand meets empty air. Shuddering, he holds his book closer.

"Is there anything I ought to know?" he asks, when the silence becomes too much for even him to stand.

"There are many things you should know but don't," is Robin's prompt and unhelpful answer. Eyeing him, Robin adds, "For instance, you ought to be more specific when conversing with one of my nature. If you want to know anything about the underworld, I'm afraid I can't tell you much. I never take this route. Much too slow."

Todd swears under his breath when the ground shifts under his feet, like loose but silent gravel. "What sort of poetry does the queen like?"

"It's not a good time of year for spring poems, I'll tell you that. No wandering as lonely as a cloud." Robin seizes Todd's coat lapel and pulls him to the left. Just in time, it turns out; half of Todd's right foot lands in empty air. "Queen Persephone's a woman of distinct and unusual tastes. She detests liars, though, so find words that speak the truth of your heart. Easily done, no?"

 _No,_ Todd wants to echo, but his heart is still in his mouth from the close call.

They walk onwards. Light steals over the plain so subtly that Todd is walking for several minutes before he realizes he can _see_ the mist eddying around them on all sides. They might be the only people there; for all Todd knows, they are the only people, though that seems unlikely. "Where are we?" he asks. His voice, already quiet by nature, is nearly lost in the gloom.

"An in-between sort of place," Robin answers, leading on with apparent unconcern. "Purgatory, you might call it, or the Plain of Lost Souls, or anything you like. Mortals and names! It might be fun to let you wander around here in circles until you're old and withered, but I do have sympathy for young lovers. It comes of too many run-ins with you lot. I have to be twice as tricky with everyone else to keep them from saying I've gone soft."

"Thank you?" Todd tries, but Robin only laughs in response. Todd falls silent again, flexing his fingers to keep the blood flowing. He's cold and tired. They've been walking for what feels like hours, and he's seen nothing besides endless darkness and now endless mist. Is there even a path, or did Robin give into temptation after all? Are they lost?

He yawns, then yawns again when once proves insufficient. Cold and tired. If he could just rest by the side of the road, he might get to see Neil sooner. After all, Neil is down here in the underworld. If Todd dies here, it hastens the reunion. Perhaps there's no need to go back, to return to the world that killed Neil in the first place. If he could just lie down and let the cold wash over him, if he sets down the book and goes to sleep...

"No!" Robin shouts, but he's far away, the brightness of his hair already lost in the mist. "It's the spirits that live in the mist, Todd! They abhor those with purpose! Read them something! Remember why you're here!"

When Todd drops his book onto the ground, a few scraps of paper flutter out. They bear the familiar scrawl of Charlie's handwriting. He frowns. He's tired, so tired, but Charlie had been promising to show them some forbidden Beat poetry. He reaches down and unfolds the little bundle of paper.

 _SUNFLOWER SUTRA--GINSBERG_ proclaims the top of the first page. " _I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look for the sunset over the box house hills and cry,_ " Todd reads, and loses himself in the blues-driven words, a rhythm that beats itself between joy and despair. " _We're not our skin of grime,_ " promises the last stanza of the poem. " _We're not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all golden sunflowers inside…._ "

The mist is gone when he refolds the papers, clutching them tight in one fist. Todd stumbles forward, following Robin to where a castle rises granite-hard out of the earth, softened only by browned and withered ivy. "Everything's all mixed up," he gasps when they pause for breath outside the gates. "Why would a Greek queen live in a medieval castle?"

"You mortals see what you expect to see," Robin says, "and no one so young has made up his mind about death." He cups his hands around his mouth. "Hello! Your Majesty Queen of Hades, I've brought you the boy you asked for!"

The gates remain shut.

"She _asked_ for me?" Todd asks, alarmed. He much preferred feeling insignificant in church to the interest of strange deities. "Why would she do that?"

"To hire you as a poet laureate, how should I know?" Robin aims a kick at the gate, then tries again. "Persephone, whose beauty is incomparable, at least in these lands where nothing grows, let your poor servants pass through your doors!"

The gates remain shut.

"She knows I work mainly for Oberon," Robin muses, hand on his chin. "I suppose that was poor phrasing."

"It's a melancholy time of year," Todd says. He glances at the poem Charlie copied, then tucks it into his pocket. "No daffodils, you said, so no sunflowers, either."

"Sensible lad."

Once again, Todd turns the pages in the book of verse, this time searching for a poem he already knows. He liked "Dover Beach" when it was first read at one of their meetings, liked it enough that he looked it up to read again. The ocean imagery in the beginning is beautiful, and then comes the last stanza, like a fist to the heart.

" _Ah, love, let us be true to one another!_ " he reads. " _For the world, which seems / To lie before us like a land of dreams, / So various, so beautiful, so new, / Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; / And we are here as on a darkling plain / Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, / Where ignorant armies clash by night._ "

Without ceremony, the gates swing open.

*

Todd and Robin ascend a great stone staircase, then walk down an enormous stone hall. Robin seems content to find himself surrounded by so much rock once more, but Todd finds the endless granite bleak. Even Welton has rugs and cushions and the occasional painting; here the walls bear only torches that burn with the same cold fire that flickers in Robin's hair.

Trepidation gives way to outright fear when the entrance hallway opens up into an enormous room, empty save for two obsidian thrones rising out of the center. One of the thrones is vacant. In the other sits a woman clad in white. From a distance, all Todd can make out is the stark pallor of her skin and the inky fall of her hair.

There's another figure kneeling at her feet.

Todd breaks into a run, forgetting Robin, forgetting fear. "Neil! Neil! Can you hear me?" Neil remains at Persephone's feet, staring out at nothing in particular. The face and form are his, but the spirit is gone. Todd's skin crawls.

"He cannot," the queen of the underworld says. Her voice is nothing like Todd would expect: it's terribly, horribly gentle. If her husband is the face of death most know, the grim reaper, then Persephone is the other face of death, the one that lays a soft kiss on your brow and tells you to rest. Her pale lips curve in a smile, and her dark eyes, the same color as Neil's, are kind. "He's a suicide. He's forgotten himself. I understand you have come to collect him."

"I've come to try," Todd says. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Robin nodding his approval. Honesty. Persephone wants honesty, and the truth in his heart. "Your Majesty, is it poetry that you want? I've never been good at public speaking, but my readings tonight have been going okay." If "okay" is the word for this singular adventure.

"You may try, since that is why you are here." Persephone settles back on her throne, one hand resting on Neil's head. "Entertain us."

Part of him has been preparing for this moment, the part of him not occupied by overwhelming terror or the sheer reality of _Neil_ , not quite back from the dead. He read "In Memoriam A.H.H." at his old school, or at least he read most of it. Enough to know that it's in this volume of poetry and it's about mourning a dead friend. Some piece of his schooling gives him the correct canto for some of the more famous lines. "Canto 27," he says, then clears his throat to recite. His voice sounds steady, and he glances up every now and again at Persephone, maintaining what he hopes is proper eye contact.

When he hits the last stanza, he gives it everything he has: " _I hold it true, whate'er befall; / I feel it, when I sorrow most; / 'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all._ "

Todd looks at Neil for the final line. He can't help it.

"That would have won back Arthur Henry Hallan," Persephone says, brow furrowing. "But I'm afraid too many others have quoted the same poem, and I find your sentiment banal. Do you really believe those words? Wouldn't you rather have never loved Neil at all?"

Todd sucks in a breath. "What?"

"I've changed my mind. I want a sacrifice," Persephone says, and Todd wonders how he could ever have found her kind.

"Of--of different words?"

"Blood," she replies, dashing Todd's last faint hope. "Your friend Nuwanda is full of life and spirit. He's already shared his true name and marked himself. He would be a fine choice. Or your friend Knox, so recently fulfilled in love. But not fulfilled entirely, no. Your other friends have good hearts, save for the liar."

Neil stays motionless, even as the queen names his friends. Todd stares open-mouthed at him, unable to look at the queen or Robin. Sacrifice another one of his friends? What would Neil say to that? Would Neil ever forgive him if he found out? Would he ever forgive himself for doing such a thing?

"If you want a life for a life," Todd whispers, mouth dry, "take mine."

Persephone studies him like a scientist who has discovered a particularly interesting specimen, her gaze as narrowed as a microscope's. "You have no use for your life. That's why you're here."

Todd drops to his knees. "Please! I must have some use for my life, since I won't give up one friend for another." The old crushing misery surges, burying whatever ridiculous fantasy he had about walking away from Welton with Neil's hand in his. Who would send him on a supernatural quest when he fails at everything he tries, from poetry to baseball? The least he can do with his futile life is throw it away for someone much bolder and brighter than himself.

No. Not throw it away. Todd walks forward on his knees until he can touch Neil's hand. It's cold, like the rest of him, but otherwise it feels like simple flesh and bone. "At least I got to see you one last time," Todd says. Is it his imagination, or does Neil's gaze flick towards him for just a second? "Do you remember how excited you were about the Dead Poets Society? Do you remember how much you loved to read and think and act? You brought the god of the cave to life. You saw something in me that was worth--worth caring for."

From where he kneels, he can't see Persephone, only Neil. "There's another poem," Todd says, and his voice trembles. "I'm reading it just for you, Neil. Because I--well, listen."

This poem has the same sentiment as Canto 27, but Todd likes the way that Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes about love. It's not foolish or grandiose to her, but something ordinary and beautiful at the same time, a continual source of joy. " _Enough! We're tired, my heart and I. / We sit beside the headstone thus, / And wish that name were carved for us._ "

How Todd knows that tiredness of which she writes. There's no recognition on Neil's face, but he does turn his head to look at Todd as though listening. _This is what you did,_ Todd tells him through another's words. _This is how you left us. This is all I have to give._

But Keating would approve of the last few lines, because even after death, there is hope, however strange Todd's hope may be: " _And if before the days grow rough / We **once** were loved, used, -- well enough, / I think, we fared, my heart and I._ "

The queen was wrong to suggest that Todd would prefer a life where he never loved Neil. Todd thinks that Neil smiles for just a moment, and that moment is enough to make his heart lurch inside his chest. Whatever comes of this, he still brought happiness to Neil after he gave into despair.

Todd tears his gaze away from Neil's when Persephone stands. There's a hint of color on her cheekbones, and her eyes are red as if she's been weeping. "I wanted truth," she says, and her voice, unlike Todd's, never wavers. "You may go. Take him with you. Do not look back. You know the stories."

"I--thank you," Todd says. "Just--thank you."

Persephone bends to brush her lips against his forehead. Her touch is cool. "Go, before I change my mind." A few feet from the throne, Robin makes an impatient beckoning gesture and Todd scrambles to follow.

"Remember the stories!" Persephone calls after them. Todd departs with that warning echoing in his ears, Neil following behind him unseen.

*

This time, the way out is crowded with people.

"Nothing ever stays the same, it's just more obvious outside the mortal realm," Robin tells Todd, whose neck is beginning to ache from how rigidly he's holding his head. Pain he can endure, as long as he doesn't look back.

"A hero!" the crowd sings, and the younger members start throwing actual garlands at Todd's feet. "He has won the day and saved his love! A hero!" 

Todd isn't one for public attention, even the adoring kind, and shrinks from their cheers. "I just want to go home," he says, because their faces indicate some sort of expectation. "I'm taking Neil with me. Do you--"

"Don't," Robin says softly. "It's against the rules."

Todd swallows the question he is about to ask and walks on. He feels bad about crushing the flowers underfoot, but their scent is heavy, soporific, and the last thing he needs is to fall asleep again. He suspects the same poem won't work twice. "Thank you, but no," he says as they offer him garlands over and over again. "They're lovely, but I can't."

It's then they begin to pour the wine.

Todd has been around others drinking alcohol, of course. Even before Charlie's contraband liquor, he remembers walking past an impromptu dorm party in his previous school. His brother liked to drink beer while watching Thanksgiving football, and his mother long since learned to look the other way. His father preferred scotch after dinner; his mother, sherry. Todd's never had any real desire to drink after his brother let him have a sip of beer once. It tasted foul, and Todd washed it down with a large glass of orange juice.

This wine, though, sings as it's poured into glasses. It smells like grapes fully realized, a scent as heavy as the flowers but delicious rather than drowsy. The celebratory crowd drinks, and their smiles are tinged with purple. Todd's empty stomach twists, and he remembers he slept through every meal today. It's been over a day since he last ate. But why should wine make him so hungry?

"Come join the victory feast!" cries a boy alongside the path. He could be Neil's brother, were it not for the blond hair. In his hands, he has a tray piled high with bread and meats and cheeses. Todd's stomach growls.

"Thank you, but no," Todd forces out, though he wants very much to put down his book and take the tray. Some memory puts him off, some story he read as a child. Where is Robin? Robin is somewhere beyond the circle of people surrounding him, their arms full of food and drink. Todd doesn't dare look back; he can think that clearly, at least.

"Are you sure?" the same boy asks. He doesn't look like Neil when he smiles, no, too sharp. He looks like Robin, but twice as wild.

 _Six pomegranate seeds,_ Todd thinks, and, _If you eat their food, you can never leave._

Todd pushes the throng of people away and runs.

"Still too slow!" Robin calls from up ahead, loping along on suddenly long legs. "Not bad for a mortal, though! I was wondering if you'd make it past the temptation!"

"Why is it always me?" Todd calls. He immediately regrets his flippancy when he has to slow for a fit of coughing. He's never been athletic.

"I can't be tamed by their food! Don't you pay attention to anything, mortal?"

Once they're safely away, they return to a more sedate pace. Todd still walks faster than normal, with nervous glances up ahead, then as far left and right as he dares. He's avoided Persephone's error, and he has no excuse to make the mistake Orpheus did. _Remember the stories,_ the queen of the underworld told him. Stories and poetry, words and words.

The mist from earlier has yet to return, but a forest has sprung out of the ground, twisting and thorny. Robin, a creature of the wood, seems quite at home despite the occasional howl in the distance. Todd has to keep his eyes on the ground after he stumbles over the first tree root. What if he lost Neil during his mad dash? What if Neil's having trouble following them now, winding as the path through the trees is?

"Todd!"

Todd almost turns to look. It's Neil's voice, fearful in a way it never was in life. (Except in private, but no, now is not the time to think of it.) "Steady," says Robin.

"Todd, please! Don't leave me alone!"

 _Like you left me alone?_ Todd wants to shout, but bites back the words until he tastes blood on his tongue. The stories don't include the part where the lovers quarrel over one of them committing suicide. The stories say that either he will falter and fail and rue the rest of his days, or he will lead his love back to the light.

"I was so alone when my parents took me home. I couldn't remember how you make me feel," Neil's voice continues, breaking on the last word. "I can't remember how to feel anything anymore. Won't you come and hold me? Help me."

He continues on in that vein. It's all Todd can do to concentrate on Robin, who seems more intent on keeping to the path than turning around to give Todd any scrap of encouragement. "Why don't I just read you something, Neil," Todd says, when tears blur his eyes to the point where he can barely follow Robin.

" _If drinking offend, transform yourself to wine!_ Page one hundred fifteen," Robin says. Evidently, he's decided to be helpful after all.

This time, despite the fear and the sorrow, Todd's voice is strong as he reads. Words have taken them too far for him to doubt now, even if he doubts all else. The line Robin quoted is the last poem in a series of sonnets to Orpheus, appropriately enough, and Todd reads loud to drown out Neil's voice.

" _Be, in this immensity of night, / the magic force at your sense's crossroad; / the purpose of their mysterious plan_ ," Todd reads as the forest clears and the path smooths to rock. Are they back inside the cave? Have they almost made it out? But then he hears Neil start again, and races to finish the poem.

" _And though you fade from earthly sight, / declare to the silent earth: I flow. / To the rushing water say: I am._ "

 _I am_ , the echoes reply, and then Robin says, "You know the way from here. Well done."

"Wait--" Todd says, but the god of the cave has vanished, back to wherever he belongs.

*

When they stumble out of the cave, the sky is lightening in preparation for sunrise.

"Todd?" Neil asks, and it's really Neil this time, soft and wondering. "I had the strangest dream."

"It wasn't," Todd sobs, and flings himself at Neil, burying his face in his neck. Neil smells like himself again, ordinary soap and pine from spending so much extracurricular time in the woods. God, he's here, alive. Both of them are, and he shakes with the wonder of it, and the terror. "You were really dead and I really came to find you and I found you, Neil, I found you."

Neil hesitates for just a moment before his arms go around Todd. He feels so real, so strong. Todd clings a moment more before he forces himself to lift his head. He can't ask Neil to be his rock, not again. They'll each have to be strong for each other.

"Don't do that again," Todd says. "I'll help you run away, I'll run away with you, I'll do anything. Just--please. Stay with me."

His plea steams in the cold air. Neil looks at him, face unreadable, his own breath fogging. "We should go back inside before they notice we're missing," Neil says at last. Then he catches Todd's cold hand, giving it a quick squeeze. "I won't leave you. Who knows what we'll find? Fairytales are always funny about the passage of time."

They can't walk back to Welton hand in hand, of course, but they stay so close that their shoulders brush. Todd's mind is a furor. What if it's a hundred years from 1959? What if it's 1859? What if everyone they know is dead? At least the buildings of Welton are still standing, and he never thought he'd be so glad to see them.

"Hello, boys!"

And there's Mr. Keating, waving as though nothing has happened. He grins at them, eyes twinkling. "A bit of early morning rehearsal for Neil's debut? Don't waste it all on rehearsal; save some for tonight!"

Todd and Neil exchange a glance. If the play is tonight, they've traveled in time, but only about two days into the past. "Oh, I'm sure I'll have plenty of inspiration for Puck," Neil says weakly, and then he pulls on a smile so smooth Todd almost misses the fear in his eyes. "We need to get changed before breakfast. Come on, Todd. See you in class, Mr. Keating!"

 _If we shadows have offended,_ Todd thinks, absurdly, but keeps himself quiet until they're safely locked in their room. "My parents gave me a little money for the semester, if you need a bus ticket," Todd says when all Neil does is sit on the end of his bed and bury his face in his hands. "I meant it when I said I would help you. Neil, I." He stops when his voice cracks. Swallows, because now Neil is looking at him. "I know this is the wrong time, but I'm in love with you. Whatever it takes to help you. Wherever you need to go."

"You'll follow me," Neil says softly, and pulls Todd down to sit next to him. Then Neil leans on his shoulder and sighs, as though he's reached a place of greater safety. "I don't want to run away. The performance is too important for that. I remember, or I think I do, that Father already knew. I'll telephone him and--see what happens from there."

"And if he says you can't do it?"

"Then I'll run as soon as I'm eighteen," Neil says, and Todd has never wanted to kiss anyone so badly in his life. He holds himself back, though, waiting to see what Neil will say next. "Eighteen and out, isn't that what they say? Then I won't be beholden to them anymore, and we can do whatever we want to do."

Todd kisses him with a ferocity he never imagined he could muster, all devouring mouth and furious teeth. When he pulls back, they're both panting. "Will you be able to last?" Todd demands, despite the way the question makes Neil flinch. "Can you make it to graduation?"

Neil's face goes distant. "I don't remember much about death. It was cold, and it wasn't living. It wasn't _anything,_ not even the escape I wanted. I couldn't see the way out, but I could hear it. All I remember is your voice leading me through the dark. If I go astray, just pull me back." He chuckles. "I think there's enough poetry in the world."

Leave it to Neil to be able to lighten such a serious mood. Todd relaxes against Neil, knowing the risk; down the hall, doors are opening as their fellow students lurch their way out of bed. "That poem I wrote for Keating's class was about you," he says, and brushes a kiss against Neil's jaw.

"Tell it to me now," Neil says, and he sounds breathless. "So I have something to keep me going when I make that call."

So Todd recites his poem, the only poem he knows by heart, into the shell of Neil's ear, as the sun lifts itself above the treetops.

**Author's Note:**

> In order, the poems quoted are:
> 
> Lord Byron, "So We'll Go No More A-Roving"  
> Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Kubla Khan"  
> John Donne, "Death Be Not Proud"  
> Allen Ginsberg, "Sunflower Sutra"  
> Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach"  
> Lord Alfred Tennyson, "In Memoriam A.H.H."  
> Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "My Heart and I"  
> Rainer Marie Rilke, "Sonnets to Orpheus"

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [These Mortal Lullabies by littledust [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1131045) by [Rhea314 (Rhea)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhea/pseuds/Rhea314)




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